All claims, disclaimers and acknowledgements for this story will be posted in the Author's Note before Chapter 1. The only other Author's Notes will be at the beginning of each chapter and will direct the reader to these notes at the beginning of Chapter 1.
I will post each chapter after I finish writing the chapter that comes after it. This will apply for all chapters except the last.
Disclaimers:
"Code Lyoko" and its characters are the property of Antefilms Ltd.
Adrian Flowerdew is my own creation, but he is also the grandson of Ginger Flowerdew who was created by the late Richmal Crompton, as were William Brown and their friends Henry and Douglas, whose surnames I do not recall. These characters are therefore the property of Ms. Crompton's estate. Adrian Flowerdew refers to these characters in the past tense because, like their creator Ms. Crompton, they are all dead at the time in which this tale is set.
A verse from "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, is used in Chapter 2. The emphasis and punctuation of this verse have been altered to interpret the manner of speech of the speaker.
A line from "The Old Familiar Faces" by Charles Lamb is used in Chapter 4.
The following poems are mentioned in the story:
"Crossing The Bar" – Walt Whitman
"O Captain My Captain" – Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" – Dylan Thomas
"Dulce Et Decorum Est" – Wilfred Owen
Claims:
Mr. Maillard and Robert Clydesfirth are my own creations, as is the aforementioned Adrian Flowerdew.
While I am certain there is enough poetry about war and death to warrant the compilation of an anthology titled "Poetry of War and Death", I know of no such anthology and therefore presume the anthology mentioned in Chapter 2 to be a figment of my imagination.
This is the end of the Author's Note.
THE OUTLAW
1. Arrival.
They all heard him approaching before they saw him arrive, his machine wailing like a lawn mower gone berserk and heading toward them at the speed of an express train. By the time the motorcycle reached the gate it had slowed down to a little above the speed at which the students would normally have walked through the gate. Now, however, no one was walking. Everyone was either standing on the side of the path or scurrying to get there. He had created a fearsome impression before anyone had seen him, or had any idea who he was. Thus encouraged, the rider increased his speed to that of a fast run and continued to park a little beyond the delivery door to the cafeteria.
Being more curious than most of the other children, Odd was the first to approach the area where the rider had parked. He watched the rider from a distance as he removed his helmet. The rider's appearance was almost as individual as Odd's own. The leather jacket, fingerless leather gloves and blue jeans may have been de rigueur for a bike rider, but the cowboy boots were not. Their being heavily soaped and polished could not hide the fact that they were also heavily worn. The silver buckles that on each boot held a leather strap more or less tautly from ankle to ankle took to polishing remarkably better than the rest of the boots did, and the right ankle strap was very obviously newer than the rest of the boot. The tops of the boots, into which were tucked the legs of his jeans, were decorates with leather fringes, stamped and plated tin figures, and beads.
The individual look below his jeans, however, was minor when compared to his face. The hair atop his head was reasonably short, and the beard below his chin was quite closely cropped. Most of his flaming red hair, however, was on his face in the form of a huge handlebar moustache and almost equally huge sideburns that, all together, formed a continuous expanse of hair from one ear to the other. Despite its considerable mass, this bulk of hair was kept in control almost as rigidly as that which Odd sported on his head. The moustache and sideburns flowed gracefully into each other, making him look rather more military than grizzled.
To Odd, however, this wholly individual look brought forward a concept vague to his mind, a kind of historical figure he had not much thought of, a figure somewhat lost to his generation after almost a century of being a well-recognized visage. Odd spoke his thought aloud: "Wow! A cowboy!"
Ulrich had by this time caught up with his roommate, and had seen what Odd saw. Being better informed than Odd as a result of reading his father's old cowboy comics at his grandfather's house and later of reading books that tried to separate Old West facts from Old West lore, Ulrich saw someone rather different. The meticulously groomed face did not speak of someone living a hard life in open country. Ulrich's suspicion was further raised when the rider opened his jacket and looked at his watch... his railroad watch. Cowboys reckoned time by the day and the mile, and if they wanted to know how much of the day he had left he simply looked up and quickly figured it from how high the sun was in the sky. Railroad watches were for the events of men: the arrival of a train or stagecoach, the opening or closing of a bank, the time a certain individual would usually enter a saloon, the time a certain individual would usually stagger out of a saloon.
Despite the rough clothes, Ulrich did not figure the stranger to be a cowboy. He took him to be something far more dangerous. An outlaw. A gunman. A killer.
"I don't know," Ulrich said to his roommate, "but I've got a bad feeling about this guy…"